


Within Reach

by kirogaraii



Series: A Bitter Sweet World : ShuuKazu [12]
Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: Developing Friendships, Gen, Implied/Referenced Murder, M/M, Mutual Pining, Other, Short & Sweet, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:35:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27067975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirogaraii/pseuds/kirogaraii
Summary: The sports festival is here. Everything has thus proven to be uneventful since his return to Japan, and Shuu definitely didn’t expect to be greeted with something like… this.
Relationships: Iwamine Shuu/Nanaki Kazuaki (Original)
Series: A Bitter Sweet World : ShuuKazu [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1623460
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Within Reach

“Hey Hiyoko, have you heard of the January Incident?”

“January Incident? No, I didn’t hear of a thing like that. What’s it about?”

“It’s a rumor that has spread since the start of the year, but not many birds know about it. Apparently it is the January Incident that resulted in doctor Iwamine’s reputation going down the drain, since his very first month of employment…”

“Really! Now I’m invested!!”

“The story goes, that a pair of average students from class 3-1 went out into the infirmary one day in January, and no one ever saw them again.

The students weren’t very known. They kept to themselves and spent their school years without trouble. This was the month of their final exams, so they were close to graduating. Dying at such a time in your life is extremely tragic, isn’t it?

There, well… Of course there weren’t any witnesses to document what happened exactly, but some anonymous students have submitted their alibis. What makes this story so terrifying and suspicious is that no teacher has ever confirmed or denied what happened. It’s a forbidden topic, and if you ask one of the teachers of the 3rd years about it, they’ll say that they can’t talk about it out of wishes by the headmaster.

They vanished in the infirmary, so obviously… doctor Iwamine is the suspect. His attitude definitely doesn’t help. He’s always saying these hardcore things and threatening to harvest our organs if we’re disobedient, so that’s a red flag…

The two students from class 3-1 were ‘friends’. Apparently they only really hung out with one another, and some birds said that they’re soulmates, or some kind of non-biological twins. That somehow makes it even more scary… That they had to-… They died together…

I-I mean I don’t know if they died together, no one knows. But they vanished simultaneously. No news talked about it, not on the radio. It’s like everyone collaborated to hide their existence in the first place.

But, um… The story has been gossiped about back and forth, so it might be like a game of telephone… Some details might not be true, but one is a solid fact…

Two students have vanished without a trace, and doctor Iwamine is the only suspect.”

“…Woah… That’s really scary. It’s scary how we can’t get any information about it. Hm… Is doctor Iwamine even in the school right now? You’ve been to the infirmary recently, right, Ryouta?”

“No, he’s not present… He’s at a conference mission overseas. Sakazaki-senpai is who gave me my regular stomach medicine…”

“Whew! Well it’s expected, since he’s so famous and all, he must have a lot of work even outside of school. But he’s gonna be back by the time of the sports festival, right?”

“Yeah, yeah. Definitely. Sakazaki said so, too…”

* * *

The sound of buzzing cicadas among trees and greenery, the smell of blossoming flowers, and if you venture deeper and listen to something farther away in the distance, you’ll hear the calls and laughter of a hundred young birds, gathered in the St. Pigeonation’s school yard.

A translucent roof was set up above the entire school building. Despite the broad sunlight, it’s heat did not seem as scorching as expected. The birds sweat nonetheless and had to ensure to not get an unwanted burn, but the temperature was just good enough that sports activities continued to be fun.

Students present, as well as teachers, and apparently some birds’ parents even managed to come along. Not a lot of them, because most are busy with their jobs, but some moms found the time out of their day to come and cheer on their sons.

The festival began some time ago, everyone is already pumped and in the groove… of swelling those pigeon muscles.

The infirmary tent’s veil shuffled a little, and a bird exited.

A little farther away from the tent, and from the festival altogether was a calm spot, which was overcast by shadows from the crowns of trees. A humble blanket was laid out on the grass, and on top of the blanket was a laptop, a bag, and a loafing chukar partridge.

The doctor glanced up when a group of doves raced past him on the track, and then looked back down, beginning to note down onto his clipboard with a quill.

…Suddenly he became aware of another dark shadow looming over him.

“May I help you.” asked Shuu without looking up.

“Ah! You noticed me!”

Hearing the familiar voice belonging to Kazuaki, Shuu lifted his pen off the page. His eyes turned to the quail.

“Hello, professor Nanaki.”

“Hello, Iwamine-kun~”

The quail looked a little sweaty as if he came here running, but Shuu assumed that it was just from him having been standing in the sun. It appeared also that he was carrying a stack of boxes.

“Whatchu doing~” Kazuaki slipped farther into the shadowy spot beside Shuu. “I thought I’d find you in the first-aid tent, but Sakazaki-kun told me that you’re here…”

“You were looking for me?” Shuu’s beak turned up at the other bird, and then down at the document again. “Well, I am observing the… performance of some selective students. The events have not started yet, however. …Mmm… How about you? Shouldn’t you be overseeing your students?”

“Nope! I have a very special mission today!” Kazuaki lifted up the stack of boxes, specifically showing off the one at the top, which seemed to have one dark opening in the middle. “I am selling lottery tickets!”

“Lottery tickets?”

“It was a bit of a last minute decision. For just 100¥, you can buy a ticket with a number on it, and then go into the building to see if your number matches one of the rewards. There’s stuff like backpacks, and pens. But also clothes, and one of them is even a video game console!” Kazuaki whimpered, “I want that game console myself… Uuu…”

“Oh. Interesting.” Shuu seemed to listen with one ear, but simultaneously focused on writing down his own notes.

A cheer faded in and out in the distance. Someone must’ve reached the finish line. Kazuaki’s gaze traveled across the trees and greenery in their surroundings for a quiet minute, as neither of them seemed to know what to say to continue the conversation. Finally, Kazuaki leaned against the tree, and dug with his galliforme talon in the dirt.

“You’ve been away in the last two weeks, huh…” his voice was timid.

“Yes.” Shuu answered straightforwardly. “It was a conference mission. Overseas.”

“You’re so busy…” mumbled Kazuaki wistfully. It piqued Shuu’s attention.

“…Were you requiring me during this time? Any medical problems?”

“No… Not medically… umu…”

Kazuaki hugged the stack of boxes in his wings, voice turning quiet and small “I missed you…”

Something glistened in Shuu’s eyes. He looked up from the clipboard a second later. “…What?”

“I didn’t know that you were gonna leave, and only looked at your work plan once you were already gone… It’s been so lonely without you in the school. I was sad…”

For a reason that Shuu did not fully understand himself, his heart thumped loudly against his chest.

Kazuaki tried to hide it to no avail, a little smile appeared on his face, “So I missed you. I’m happy that you’re back~…”

The chukar’s eyes wandered down into the grass around them. He replied with the same monotony as always, or perhaps a successful imitation of it; “…I see.”

He didn’t want to dwell on this moment for too much, so he cleared his throat and tightened the grip on his quill again.

But Kazuaki wasn’t done yet.

“I’ve been trying to do those things you’ve recommended to me while you were gone! Like making food that isn’t instant ‘toss-it-in-the-microwave’ or ‘pour-some-water-on-it’. I’ve tried to cook rice and put something in it, like eggs, and tomato, and pepper…” his voice wavered dramatically, “I always end up doing the eggs wrong, t-they either get burnt or have a weird texture, but I did it!”

Shuu was pleased to hear that, even if he didn’t say it.

“So, um, I knew that you’d finally be at work today, so I decided to bring you something…”

“…Huh?”

Drumming his fingers on the boxes, Kazuaki finally sat down next to Shuu, their feathers almost touching. Shuu had no way but to look the other right in the eyes, very confused now.

Kazuaki was happy, and even Shuu could feel some of the quail’s energy radiate onto him. Kazuaki quickly became super flustered. “I brought…” he stammered while retrieving the most bottom box. It appeared to be a lunchbox.

“L-…Lunch for you~”

Kazuaki held out the red lunchbox, his cheeks having taken on a complementary red shade as well. Trying to mask his incredible shyness, he grinned through it all.

Baffled, Shuu’s eyes bored into the eye-catching box and the bird holding it, glancing back and forth between the two. He didn’t even realize that his beak gaped slightly. “…You…brought lunch for me?”

“Yup!” A hopeful smile lit up Kazuaki’s face, “I-I’m not very good at making those cute picture bento you see on the internet, but I did my best… It’s got rice, and eggs, and I even added some noodles, and I tried cutting some sausage up to look like octopuses, because it looked easy…” he stuttered, “N-Not that I was lazy and ‘easy’ with it, it’s just that—I wanted it to be actually edible and presentable, so I didn’t want to mess it up and give you something that looks like it was already eaten before, hahaha~”

Shuu stared at the box with an unreadable expression. Kazuaki rambled more, “While looking at recipes, I actually ended up researching everything on the wikipedia page for bento, did you know that there is this kind called  _ shikaeshiben _ which is a so called "revenge" bento, that wives make for their husband to get back at them by writing insults in the food or making the bento inedible’? That sounds scary, but also kind of powerful. A-Although, I think that’s a bad conversation starter if you want to let your husband know that you’re unhappy with him………

AaaAh! Sorry! Sorry! I started talking without meaning to! Um, yes, this is… a bento! Do you accept it?”

Shuu fluttered his lashes when he woke himself back into reality. Then he wrinkled his forehead, “You… put a lot of effort into it, did you not.”

“…Yes! I wanted to make sure that it’s at least acceptable for Iwamine-kun.” His mood seemed to race as quickly as his topics of conversation, Kazuaki suddenly looked worried, “What’s wrong? Are you mad? Are you allergic to rice?! …Is it even possible for a Japanese bird to be allergic to rice…?”

“I’m not. I’m not mad. Forgive me, I was… surprised by this gesture.” Shuu finally allowed himself to sigh, “And yes, it is possible for people and birds to have a rice allergy. It is relatively uncommon. I do not have it.”

He sighed. A plan seemed to be brewing up inside his head. His reaction was pretty understandable, imagined Kazuaki.

It’s not every day that a colleague showers you with food for no apparent reason, after all!

“Ehehe… You’re startled because you don’t usually receive food, a-am I right?”

“That’s… not an entire truth.” The feathers ruffled up on Shuu’s back, “I guess another reason why I am speechless is because I generally do not accept food.”

“Huh?” Kazuaki frowned.

“I have a lot of enemies, you see.”

“……Huh…”

“It’s not often that I receive food, but there was also one particular time where a bird offered me their cooking, with the goal of poisoning me.”

Kazuaki paled. An appropriate reaction.

“However that fool failed when the amount of poison they slipped into my food turned out to be laughable. Well, considering that I did not experience organ failure that is. I felt sick to my stomach for the next day though.” Shuu’s expression eased. “I suppose I’ve just been cautious of any food I don’t buy myself because of that.”

Worried and concerned, Kazuaki’s shoulders sank. “Oh, I see, that happened… That’s so scary… Are you really so popular that people want you dead?”

“I think it’s less about my popularity and more about what I am popular  _ for _ .” Very unmatching to the conversation, Shuu held back, and then began to chuckle. “And for  _ whom _ I worked for… Hohohoho…”

Kazuaki seemed mostly unsuspicious by that wording, and instead held the little lunchbox in his wings, “Uuhm, so you won’t accept my gift then…?”

The smirk disappeared, Shuu became serious again. “…I did not say that.”

The red hue. The saturated hue, contrasting between everything else in sight. Shuu’s eyes were naturally drawn to it.

…That’s not the entire truth to it. That’s not the entire reason why Shuu is averting to food.

But the more he stared at the box in silence, which Kazuaki seemingly allowed him for longer than would be reasonable, the more those thoughts filled up his head.

Shuu finally gave a slow nod.

“How ironic. I did not eat today, and now I’m losing my composure and focus.” he held out his hand, “I apologize again for my slowness. Thank you for this. I trust that the ingredients were not rotten and I won’t get sick from this, hm?”

“Really? You’re taking it!” Kazuaki quickly placed the box in the other’s hand, “I-I did my best! I hope that you’ll like it! Please enjoy it!”

“I’ll return the box to you tomorrow.” said Shuu while holding the gift in both hands.

Kazuaki clasped his hands together, smiling endlessly. It seemed as if Shuu was avoiding his gaze as much as possible, and then slowly turned to a bag resting beside the tree. “I feel uneasy accepting something like this, but I don’t have anything to repay you with…”

“It’s cool, it’s cool~ Repaying isn’t necessary~ This is a gift, after all!” Chastised Kazuaki, but Shuu’s wing was already digging around in the bag.

“Would you like a… cup of water?” Shuu looked at Kazuaki, with a water bottle in hand.

“No no, it’s okay!”

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Shuu held a travel mug of coffee in hand.

“It’s okay, Iwamine~”

“Would you like a cup of cough syrup?” Shuu held a brown glass bottle in hand. “Particularly, this is a syrup that I have been experimenting with in regards to ingredients. It has honey…

…

And heroin.”

“N-No thank you, doctor!!”

“How about pesticide? The last words from birds who’ve tried it were ‘it tasted delicious’.”

“I’m gonna go with the first option!!”

“Alright then.” Said Shuu with a comforting smile, making it completely impossible to guess if his offers were sarcastic or honest.

And after that ordeal, the two birds finally settled down in silence. Kazuaki held his gifted bottle of water, and promptly screwed it open to have a drink. By that point, Shuu’s posture had returned to what he was doing previously. He set the bento aside inside his bag, loafed on top of the blanket, and became occupied with writing notes in his clipboard, violet eyes glancing up every now and then at the race track—At the crowds and groups of birds over there in the distance.

“Ah!” Kazuaki chimed suddenly, ripping Shuu out of his brainspace again, “I meant to tell you something!”

“…What is it?”

“Ehee~” The quail clasped his hands together, barely containing his excitement, “While you were away, I got a wonderful offer! The most awesome offer ever! The best news I’ve heard in my life!”

Shuu raised an eyebrow. Kazuaki is good at exaggerating isn’t he.

“My writing is gonna be published~! That’s right! Yes!!”

“Oh really.” Emotion very lightly budged the doctor’s tone. Naturally, Kazuaki did not expect anything more than that. He actually may have expected less, but then Shuu folded his pen and tilted his head, as if to make up for the inability to express an emotion with his facial features, “—Congratulations.”

“T-Thank you very much~!”

“I don’t believe I’ve seen your writing before. I don’t usually make spare time for things like… appreciating  _ art _ , so I did not think much of your literary skills. Now… I am a bit curious,” Kazuaki gaped his mouth slightly when Shuu continued “—What kind of literature have you published now? Poetry? Fiction?”

“Um…! Um, that’s right, I do write both of these things… My things haven’t been published yet though~ it’s just in development, so far~” Kazuaki scratched the back of his head, cheeks growing pink, “I-It’s poetry… Haikus.”

“Ah. Very artsy, then.” Shuu pondered for a moment, letting out a sigh in thought. “I can’t promise anything. I am terribly busy… every day, as you know. But if the opportunity and mood comes, I wouldn’t mind taking a look at it.”

The quail’s eyes lit up with little stars, his feathers stood up in excitement, “Really! I’ll prepare a special copy just for you, then! I’ll bring you one for free!”

“…Thank you.”

For the first time in this meeting, Shuu smiled. It felt so faint and so quick that Kazuaki thought his imagination tricked him. In the blink of an eye, the partridge had already returned his gaze to the clipboard in his wings.

“Don’t you think you should be somewhere?” he asked modestly, catching Kazuaki off guard. The quail perked his head up to glance at the school field and the chants some distance away. “Yes… I think I should go now. I don’t want to slack off…”

“Not too much, that is.” Shuu corrected him.

“Uwaah!” Whined Kazuaki as he got up to his feet. He began to step away with the coin box in his wings, but then turned his head back at the doctor. “Um, have a nice day then! I hope you’ll enjoy the lunch!”

Shuu responded without lifting his head anymore. “…Same to you.” he said, and continued to write.

He looked up from beneath his eyelashes, and watched Kazuaki’s silhouette move farther and farther away.

…He left behind his water bottle in the grass. The careless bird. Shuu admired it there for a minute, how the sun reflected off its glassy surface. He then picked it up, and with another wing, picked up a marker instead of a pen.

A code word was written on the label’s surface. One that made it very clear to the doctor only, that this is a valuable sample worth savoring.

Shuu hid it in his bag and was just about to return to his data analysis, but a familiar red shimmer caught his attention. The lunchbox.

He set the pens down, and the clipboard aside. With his back against the tree, he made himself comfortable. Rice, eggs, sausage, complementary red peppers were here as well. It looked surprisingly good. Just from looking at it, you could tell that the bird that prepared this lunch put his heart into it.

…Well, if there really were a heart in it, Shuu would be trifold excited. That would be too good to be true…

Even if the eggs turned out too salty and the ramen flavorless… it’d be rude to discard a gift as lovely and personal as this.

With a pair of chopsticks in his left wing, the doctor began to eat.

**Author's Note:**

> Hiii~!  
> …Sorry for the two month break!! Agh!! Allow me to explain!
> 
> After the last chapter, I opened an askblog on Tumblr called bittersweet-au where you can interact with the story and ask our main four phasianids things. That’s all I’ll say so far! Please visit it! I answer with art and writing too!
> 
> I got artblocked along the way and it proved to be too stressful for me to handle… and I promised myself that I wouldn’t post a new chapter until the Two asks in my askbox are cleared… But art is difficult…
> 
> But now I did it, not as impressively as I hoped I’d do it, so I’m posting this chapter. I hope to post updates regularly again. Rip it’s just the start of summer in this fic series, and it’s the start of winter IRL here ToT
> 
> Thank you for reading!!! As always!!! Ah!!!


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